Current mood:

anxious

New Blinky Fic: The Piper and the Gunsmith 1/2
That's it, I'm posting it. Finally, I'm posting it. This is the long fic that I finished as first draft about two months ago. It's had the heck rewritten out of it since then, mostly on the whim of my incredibly talented beta reader, greenygal.

I would appreciate any feedback, long, short, positive or negative. I'm spent so much bloody time on this thing, I just wanna see people read it. Please :-).



Author's Notes:

I can't believe I wrote this.

There are several reasons for this disbelief, not the least of which is the length. Lately I've had a hell of a time getting anything over a couple of thousand words done, this one rounds out at about eleven and a half thousand.

Second is the genre; this is... well, it's not the type of thing I'd normally write.

Actually, strike that. It is, and it isn't. It is, at heart, a romance, and that's not something I tend to favour in my writing. On the other hand, it's a very 'Blinky' romance, full of darkness and heavy on plot. It's also a sort of an elseworlds, the DC name for an AU. I say sort of, because we see it through the eyes of someone who *is* from the main DC universe, thus certifying that the main universe is indeed still the main universe.

And speaking of the person we see it through the eyes of...

People who read this who happen to know quite a lot about the DC universe will no doubt wonder why the heck I've chosen Fauna Faust, a bit character who only showed up about ten years ago in the ill-fated second "Outsiders" title, and then as a villain, as a protagonist. To which I can only reply, "Well, I had this idea, you see..."

The idea is for a team, set in the DC universe and featuring DC characters. It's a team... quite unlike any other team out there, I can absolutely guarantee it. I have ideas for stories about this team. I haven't, however, written any of them, beyond a few notes. Usually I'm loath to include elements in my writing that rely in any way on something not yet written. And yet here I am, trying to justify it. The only thing I can say is that I really wanted to write this now, in this way, because I really thought it *fit*.

In any case, as with all of my writing, I don't believe you need to understand who the characters are and where they are at to enjoy this story. I always try my hardest to explain that within the context of the story, and I hope that this piece is no different.

I hope you enjoy it. I had a hell of a time writing it. Take that as you wish :-).



The Piper and the Gunsmith

"You okay?"

Fauna Faust jumped and looked up from where she was perched on a rusted sewer pipe. "My ankle's a bit sore. I think I twisted it a little while we were running away. Uh. Where's Piper?"

"Making sure we weren't followed. He'll be back soon; don't worry. We have the whole rescue thing down to a fine art."

"Thank you. I didn't know what I was going to..."

Her companion shrugged. "It's what we do. The Piper and the Gunsmith, fearless rebels on the side of good and righteousness, and all that jazz. And we're cute too." He nodded to her leg. "You can rest it now, anyway. This place isn't exactly cosy, but the government doesn't know about it, so it's a great little cubby hole." The Gunsmith yawned and sat himself down cross-legged on the grimy floor.

"I'm guessing it's about as cosy as sewers get. Do you and Piper live here?"

"We don't live anywhere, sweetcakes. This is a safe house, that's all. Staying still means someone might find us; we're smarter than that."

"The government?"

"Or evil minions of such. You know, I'm almost starting to believe you when you say you come from another world."

Fauna frowned helplessly. "I know it's hard to accept..."

"Hey, I didn't say I *did* believe you. No offence, but you could just be nuts." He hauled his pack off his back, pulled a gun from it and started to take it apart with expert precision, cleaning the pieces as he went.

"It's true! I swear I don't belong here. I mean, I don't want to be rude, but to me this place is really twisted."

He snorted. "Hate to break this to you, toots, but it's not exactly that wonderful to us either."

"I'm sorry. I just... I'm only vaguely sure about how I got here and I'm afraid I'm not going to get home. Right now I can't even think of any way *to* get home. And I'm tired, and I'm cold, and none of the animals here listen to me, and I haven't seen my friends since I woke up, which means I don't know whether they're somewhere here or still safe at home and probably trying to find me. And now I just got rescued by someone who looks a lot like one of my team mates, except he isn't, and he's teamed up with you, and the government's after me, which would be bad enough if the government wasn't apparently some kind of full-on evil Nazi operation."

The Gunsmith managed to tactfully ignore the rest of her rant and zero in on the very end. "A what operation?"

She blinked. "You don't know what Nazis are? Okay, this is worse than I thought. Or maybe it even makes sense, I don't know. Look, there are still superheroes here, right?"

"Depends on what you define as a superhero and why they're so much better than a normal hero."

"People with powers. You were floating on air back then..."

"Anti-gravity boots. Don't go on an obscenely dangerous rescue mission without them."

"Oh. Well look, *are* there people with powers? Metas? And magic people? There is magic, right?"

"I don't know much about magic, but there are a few of your...metas? Is it? There're a few of them around. Fewer that are free. The government doesn't like them; too scared of the power. There's a special camp outside of Gotham where the government keeps the ones that aren't killed flat-out. God knows what goes on there." The reassembled gun was placed neatly on the ground, and he pulled another from the pack. "Pity, really. A few more would make the whole rebelling shtick a damn sight easier."

"Couldn't you rescue them?"

"From the camps? Hell, we can't even get people out of the normal ones, and that one has extra tight security. Not a chance, in other words."

"You said something about how you escaped from the camps, though..."

He looked at her curiously. "I would have thought that was obvious."

"I don't..."

He frowned, sizing her up. Then he moved his hand upwards and tapped the stylised G that was seared around his eye. "You seriously don't recognise this, do you?"

"It's a tattoo?"

"It's a brand. It's around the eye, which means it comes from the camps. Means *I* come from the camps. A guarantee that I can't go back to 'normal' society, at least without a damn good make-up job everyday, and you have no idea how much trouble getting the resources for that is." He abandoned his cleaning and leaned back against the wall, looked at her thoughtfully. "That's one of the biggest problems with freeing people from the camps. What do they do after? We can't look after a bunch of weak and half-starved escapees, they'd just slow us down and get *everyone* caught. Breaking in and out of those places is near impossible, and once they're out, keeping them alive *is* impossible. Everybody loses in the end."

"Oh. I mean, I don't really know what to... I mean, that's just...just *shitty*."

He let out a bark of laughter. "I think that about sums it up, yeah. If you do come from another world, at least it teaches people to identify shittyness."

"Strangely enough, I kinda figured it out on my own." She sighed and abandoned the uncomfortable pipe, sliding down to the floor. There was silence for a few seconds, and the Gunsmith went back to his cleaning.

"Uh, G? Is it?"

"Just G is fine. Technically it's Giovanni, but no one calls me that anymore."

"Sure, okay. G. That's actually what I was going to ask. I mean, I assumed that the tattoo stood for your name, especially with the P that Piper has. But if it's from the camps..."

"It stands for Gypsy. And no, I'm not an actual Rom. I was a Carney, travelled around with the circus. The government started cracking down on 'itinerants' and we all got tarred with the same brush. They said we were going off to do more 'productive' work. Nice of them, hey?"

"Geez. And... umm... Piper's?"

"He got put in the camps because he was gay. Use your imagination, sunshine."

"I don't under... oh."

"Charming, isn't it?"

"Charming." She bit her lip and silence reigned again. Then she blurted out: "How do you live like this? I mean, seriously. Always on the run and knowing that any good you do is only a drop in the ocean. And you can't even have any sort of *life* and... I couldn't do that. I don't understand... I mean, you smile! How can you smile?"

He was smiling now, looking at her in what looked like amusement. "I'm a sunny kinda guy?"

"I'm serious!"

"I like smiling."

"That's not an answer."

"You seriously want an answer?"

"I wouldn't have asked otherwise!"

He stretched and shifted position. "This life isn't as bad as you make it out to be. I mean, you may not be particular to running, but I'm used to being on the move. That's one reason."

"There are lots of reasons?"

"Three main ones. Second, well, you know what it feels like to con yourself into a government holding facility and waltz out with their prisoner while the bastards stand around oblivious?"

"Really, really paranoia-inducing?"

"Hey, I like stretching my skills to the max for a worthy cause."

She looked incredulous. "You like doing this to get a rush?"

He raised an eyebrow. "Doing it just for the rush, I would have got myself killed years ago."

"So why haven't you?"

G's expression softened, and he shrugged in a way that was a little too casual. "I couldn't leave him," he said simply.

"Oh." Fauna blinked and found herself smiling a little. "That's kinda sweet."

"Sweet? I'm sorry, no. Sweet is shallow. We've been through too much to ever be shallow."

"I didn't mean..."

G offered her a light smile. "I know you didn't. It's okay."

"Right." She shuffled awkwardly. "So, um. Did you meet in the camps? I mean, you don't have to tell me if...if..."

Her companion finished reassembling the gun he'd been working on and aimed it at the far wall, checking the sights. "If what?"

"Well, you know. If it's too distressing or..."

He looked back at her, his expression unreadable. "Can I ask why you're interested?"

"I don't know. I just... The stuff you're talking about is so... And you seem so..."

"So...?"

"Sane? Which is good! I just... What was it like? How did you *cope*?"

G gave her a thoughtful look and put down the gun. "We still have plenty of waiting time. I'll tell you if you want. As stories go, it's not much different from the stories of thousands of other people who ended up at the camps."

"Except yours has a happier ending, right?"

A faint smile played across his face. "There is that, yes."

"I'd like to hear it, but only if you don't mind. I mean, you don't know me at all. For all you know I could be some kind of government plant that you were supposed to rescue and give all your secrets to."

"You're not." G grinned at her.

She found herself grinning back despite herself. "You're that sure?"

"Of course. I'm way too good to make a mistake like that."

She smirked. "Okay, now you're *so* just being an arrogant bastard."

G shook his head in amusement. "You wouldn't be the first person to say it. In all seriousness, though, there's nothing in this story that a government agent wouldn't already know, so I'm hardly taking any chances."

"Ah, okay."

"So make yourself comfortable."

She gave the damp, dirty room a quick glance and wrinkled her nose. "Right."

He rummaged around his pack and produced a thin, tightly rolled cushion. "Here, sit on this. I told you, this isn't the most comfy of environments, but at least it's safe."

"I didn't..."

G held up a hand to stop her, and then leaned back against the wall, his expression fading into reflection.

She unrolled the cushion and settled down to listen.

***

"As I said, I grew up in a circus. My family were trapeze artists and acrobats. 'The Flying Jesses', that was our stage name. Guess my parents thought that 'The Flying Giuseppes' didn't roll off the tongue as well. It wasn't a bad life. It wasn't the best, most wonderful life under the sun, either, especially with the way the world started to lean as I got older. Still, I had food, I had a basic education and I had freedom. I also had my gadgets; I was a heck of a tinkerer even back then."

"What did you make?"

He shrugged. "Oh, nothing useful. No weapons, not like now. Practical jokes, sometimes gear to help out with the act. I started drawing up plans for stuff that was a little more... ambitious, but by that time the government had put so many restrictions on 'our kind' it was hard enough getting food for everyone, never mind parts for my contraptions.

"But in all, my life was fine in the circus. Hell, it was even a little boring. At about the time things really started to go down the toilet, I was half thinking of getting the heck out of there and making my own way."

"What were you going to do?"

"I hadn't quite figured that out. Rob banks?"

She raised an eyebrow. "Seriously?"

He looked perfectly sincere. "Why not? Could have been a challenge. In any case, it didn't matter, because the soldiers came soon after.

"Things hadn't been going well in America while I was growing up. Crime was getting worse. Terrorism from people both in and outside of the country was on the up. Some metas went nuts in Washington and killed off a few thousand citizens in one fell swoop, but it wasn't just people with powers. There's nothing much that a meta can do that a guy with a hefty fertiliser bomb or a hijacked airplane can't do.

"So the government decided to restore some 'order' to the country. The criminal element was obviously running rampant, and the good citizens of this fine country had had enough." G smiled bitterly. "One of the government's answers to this was to give 'undesirables' and 'vagrants' good, honest American jobs in nice, well-built American camps with housing attached. It seemed like a great deal to start off with, and to start off with, it probably was. The first camps were voluntary, didn't have walls, and were close to towns. Then the government decided that people weren't taking their offer with enough good grace, and decided that particularly unruly citizens could be 'attached to the camps'. They started building more camps, further out in the country. Then came the walls, and the mass evacuations. Then came the deaths. It was subtle, and a lot of people didn't even realise how bad it was getting. Many still don't." He hesitated and genuine anger flickered across his face. "Or don't want to."

He shook his head, and the bitter smile was back like a mask. "My family got moved in to Camp Hayton later on, when things were getting way out of control. It was a huge, relatively old camp full of mechanical workshops and parts factories, and close enough to a quarry for people to be trucked back and forth from there as well. Plenty to do, in other words. It was built some miles out of Keystone. Surrounded by farmland, some that the camp citizens got to look after and some that was privately owned by people who were mostly willing to turn a blind eye to what they could see happening on their own doorsteps. They were good citizens, after all.

"The first thing that happened was that we were split up. Mum went off with the women; I heard through the camp grapevine that she died from pneumonia. Dad went with the older men. Soon after he was shipped off to another camp and I never saw him again. I think he's dead; I'm fairly sure he's dead. I've never been able to find out, though."

"That's terri..."

"Yes, it's terrible." He looked at her tightly. "Shall I go on?"

Fauna bit her lip. "Right... I'm sorry. I'm listening."

"The second thing that happened was the brands. Well, they call them tattoos; but that's just whitewashing. They were brands, nothing less." He stared at the sewer wall, his eyes somewhere far away. "It was... the most painful experience I've ever had in my life. You have absolutely no idea how *excruciating*... They held me down. And I screamed, and it seemed shameful until you realised everyone else screamed as well."

There was silence, until he shook his head and started again, in a voice that was carefully conversational.

"I was stuck with a lot of young, and a few middle-aged, guys. Scared, in pain, in a crowded and dirty room with a bunch of strangers. They figured we'd be good for the hard, backbreaking labour, so off to the quarry we went. Lucky us. It was awful work, with too little food and not enough sleep, and I spent a week doing it in a kind of numb shock, getting my bearings, trying to comprehend what my life had been reduced to.

"Then I thought, screw this. Why the hell should I sit by and let the bastards do this to me? I was smarter than them; still am. Getting out was going to be difficult, the brand would make it more so. But I could do it. I knew I could do it precisely because they didn't think I'd ever have the balls to try.

"I moved slowly. I moved cleverly. I watched one or two others try to escape, only to be gunned down, and I vowed that that wasn't going to happen to me.

"I had more resources to draw on than most of the people there. Carney life had done me well. On the smarts side, I knew how to grift and I knew how to manipulate, so I started to wheel and deal. I did favours for people and facilitated favours between people. I found out which guards were up for a little corruption and I smuggled food through them in exchange for any valuables that people in my sector had managed to keep hold of. I made myself the person to talk to if you desperately needed something and in the process, I put aside a little stuff for myself. I also got myself regular semi-decent meals. After all, I needed to keep my strength up.

"The other thing I had on my side was the acrobatics, and damn did I use that. No one dared to be outside their dormitory at night, on pain of being shot. I wanted to see if there was any way I could get out of the camp using the rooftops, so I went out regularly. I shimmied up drainpipes and paced the rooftops; I walked the tightrope on electrical cables; I darted through the shadows and avoided the spotlights. I slunk into the workshops and pinched parts that wouldn't be missed. I sidled into the kitchens and grabbed food to barter with. I eavesdropped on conversations and figured out how to get in and out of nearly every building in the camp." He grinned. "And I never got caught."

"That's amazing."

"Hey, I told you I was good. That's not to say I didn't have one or two close calls."

"Close calls?"

"A couple of times. Once I was trying to eavesdrop on a couple of guards right outside the guardhouse, just sitting on the edge of the roof out of their sight. Unfortunately, it was winter, the roof was iced up, and I slipped off the side. I hitched my elbows in the gutter before I fell all the way down, but couldn't pull myself up. I stayed there for what seemed like half the night before they finally left. My arms were so numb I forgot trying to pull myself up and just dropped into the snow bank; luckily it was soft enough that I didn't kill myself. I was a wreck the next few days at work though. I had to stay in the next few nights, which turned out to be a damn good thing because that's when I discovered Piper."

"So some good came from it?"

"Nah. I firmly believe I would have got together with him at some point anyway."

She quirked an eyebrow. "What, it was destiny?"

"Sure, why not? Nothing wrong with destiny kicking in just when you need it. God knows I was getting desperate at that point; the only way I could see of getting out was to tightrope over twenty feet of phone line in full sight of one of the guard towers, and that was obviously not an ideal solution."

"Geez."

"Trust me, save the gaping mouth until you hear what I *did* end up doing."

"What..."

He flicked his hand at her good-naturedly. "Shush. Anyway, when I say I 'discovered' Piper I mean it literally. You see, every now and again the 'sleeping quarters', and I use the term as loosely as possible, got too damn crowded for the upper echelons, and they did some pruning."

Fauna blanched. "Is it too much to hope that you mean that in the gardening sense?"

G didn't seem to notice the half-hearted joke. His expression had closed up again and his voice was... far too unconcerned.

"Pruning could happen at any time of the day and night and consisted of a bunch of higher-ups stomping in with guards and dragging off a bunch of prisoners, mostly because they were tired and weak-looking, but sometimes just because someone didn't like their face. Usually, said prisoners were never heard from again. The official line was that they were shipped off to other camps, but even the M's weren't stupid enough to believe that."

"M's?" She almost whispered the question. It didn't seem... right, to interrupt.

But he answered, his tone still determinedly untroubled. "Mentally deficient. The retards and nutjobs, as the guards liked to call them.

"The semi-regular meals I'd been getting meant that I never looked weak, and I was always nice and polite to their faces so I wasn't too worried that they'd grab me on impulse. Enough people knew that I could get things that others couldn't, however, for me to be just a bit apprehensive about someone pointing me out. Of course, since half the guards were making deals with me as well, it was doubtful that they'd let anyone squeal. Still, I spent pruning sessions watching people like a hawk and being..." He hesitated fractionally. "Let's say, excessively paranoid."

"During this particular session I was ultra-excessively-paranoid because of my recent close call, so I began to realise something odd. I was watching the whole room, all except for one corner. It was like my eyes kept sliding away from it, like my brain kept telling me that the corner wasn't important. This piqued my curiosity, of course, and I summoned up my willpower and tried to force my eyes to look and my brain to register. There was Piper, sitting pressed into the corner playing a soft tune on what looked like a small flute. No one was paying him the slightest bit of attention, guards and higher-ups included.

"I was astonished. More than astonished, I was damn impressed. Minor mind-control using music? Seriously, how cool was that? I had to talk to this guy.

"When the guards were gone and things had settled down, I sidled over to where he was curled up on his mattress-sack, and I tapped him on the shoulder and said, 'Okay, you've got to tell me how you did that.' He nearly jumped out of his skin, and turned and glared at me as if I was the devil himself. I knelt on the edge of the bed and I softly told him how I'd seen what he was doing, and he then proceeded to spend half an hour flatly denying everything."

Fauna intercepted tentatively. "I guess you couldn't blame him."

"Oh, I wasn't blaming him in the least. It was every man for himself in the camps, and for all he knew I might be about to rat him out to the guards. It took all my persuasive skills to convince him that I wasn't, that I was seriously interested in what he'd been doing, and that I wanted to work with him. When I finally did convince him, he sat back and gave this challenging look and said, 'Okay fine, just one more thing. You do see the letter I'm wearing, don't you?'

"I said, 'Sure. What, you're going to say they made a mistake?'

"And he said, 'they didn't make a mistake, and I'm not going to pretend to be sorry if you want my help. I don't have any *reason* to be sorry.'"

Fauna blinked. "That was kinda brave of him under the circumstances, wasn't it?"

"Brave or stupid, I'm sure you could make a case for either."

"So why do it? I mean geez, I would have just taken any help I could get. I know damn well some people are appalled by the fact that I sometimes sleep with women, but I wouldn't have tried to make any conditions in *those* circumstances."

G blinked at that. "Ah. You're..."

"It's not so much of a problem in my world." She looked vaguely apologetic. "I mean, it's a problem, but not the extent that... No one's looking to lock me up. Well, not for that, anyway."

He looked deeply sceptical. "In your world."

"Yes, in my world. I'm not insane, okay!"

"Uh-huh."

"Look, don't believe me if you want. It's not like I can do anything to prove my word. Just... I just wanted to know why he did it, that's all."

G stared at her for a few more seconds, and then he shrugged and tried to explain. "Okay. Fine. The thing was? In the camps they took away everything. Your possessions, your time, your dignity. But your pride and conviction? They tried to take them, they really did. But sometimes you felt like you had to hold onto them, because they were all you had left."

"Even if it killed you?"

"Better to die on your feet than live on your knees."

"You really believe that?"

"What *me*? Oh god no. But I can safely say that Piper does. I think it was what kept him going."

"Oh. Um. So, what did you say to him?"

He shrugged. "Oh, I smiled at him and went, 'I hate it when people try and hide that shit. Let's you and me team up.' So we did.

"He told me his story over the next few nights. I swapped my bed to one next to him and we hissed at each other as quietly as possible until we fell asleep from exhaustion. His name was Hartley Rathaway, he came from a family that was rich, and he hadn't been here long, which is why I hadn't really noticed him up until now. Well, that and the music.

"His parents had influence and they'd kept him out of the camps for as long as they could. He'd always been too much of a rebel though, and he just wasn't putting enough effort into hiding the fact that he loved men. In the end, they couldn't do anything more to keep him from being carted away. He suspected it was a family friend that had dobbed him in. Ain't high society grand?

"Before the camps he'd been fascinated with sound and had been making real breakthroughs in the area of sonics, especially on the effects of certain tones on the human brain. Like me, he was damn smart. Like me, he was a tinkerer. Like me, he had very little to work with in the camps. He had managed to cobble together the flute, however, and had managed to use it to get the guards to leave him alone."

"Not to try and escape?"

"Nah. It wasn't powerful or intricate enough to do that, and it was too unpredictable to use in an escape attempt. I mean, I'd seen him without trying too hard, so it stood to reason that anyone who was especially alert would probably spot that something was up. Not to mention that the gates and fences were all locked and electrified, and no shabby little flute was going to help with that.

"So he kept that guards away whenever he could. He didn't know what else he could do with no parts and no tools. Plus, his background hadn't prepared him for the workload and he was exhausted at night; too exhausted to think about doing anything but surviving.

"'Okay,' I said. We've both been holding on our own. Together we should be able to get the hell out of here, right?

"We started to plan. Firstly, he promised that if I stuck by him when the guards came in for the pruning I'd be fine. In return, I told him that I'd get him something more to eat, something to get his strength up. I told him about the parts and bits and pieces I'd been hoarding as well, and he got excited and outlined an idea he'd had.

"He was thinking about making a bomb. Now, I hadn't entertained the idea because the explosives shed was the one place in the camp that was just too well guarded for me to get into. Piper's idea for a bomb was a little different from the conventional, though. He wanted to make a sonic bomb. He figured that if he had a power supply and the right parts, he could make something that would escalate throughout all the sonic frequencies until it shook itself and everything around it apart. If we could get it to work and set it on the camp's fence, it would take a huge part of said fence out when it went off. He figured that if we could make a series of the bombs, we could set them throughout the camp and set them off as distractions to get the guards away before the big one on the fence went off, then we could make a run for it in the confusion.

"Some people would dismiss an idea like that as insanity, but I've always been an open thinker. I was also smart enough to understand the principles he was describing and they seemed sound. The hitch, of course, was getting the parts. The camp had plenty of workshops, and some of the stuff I was pretty sure I could get fairly easily. Things like batteries, however? Not so easy. A strict inventory was kept on power sources - they were too likely to be useful to the prisoners. We were stumped on that angle.

"Still, the very fact that we had a plan that was slowly being put into action was comforting to the both of us. The work was just as hellish as usual, but I was feeling almost cheerful. I won't lie, either, having someone to talk to that I at least marginally trusted was good."

"Only 'at least marginally'?"

"Sweetheart, this was the camps. I told you, it was every man for himself. At that stage I trusted him to a point, but if he'd given me up to protect himself, I wouldn't have been surprised. I wouldn't even have blamed him. If I hadn't decided that I needed the skills he had, I'd never have even approached him. As far as I was concerned, a breakout attempt was much safer with as few people knowing about it as possible. It was why I always tried to keep relations with the people in my sleeping quarters on a strictly business level. Knowledge was dangerous, and emotions doubly so."

"So when did you change your mind?"

"That was a bit later. For now I was still wary and so was he. It was only sensible.

"We had to sacrifice some precious sleep time to start putting together the prototype bomb. Piper taught me the trick to his flute and we took it in turns playing the 'we're not interesting' tune and putting it together in the light of a candle I'd swiped from an officer's hut. It would have been faster for us both to work on it together, rather than having one playing and one constructing, but as I said, we were paranoid, and not without good reason. We hid the whole thing under a loose floorboard under Piper's bed when we weren't working on it and crossed all of our fingers that it wouldn't be discovered. That'd be a quick trip to an open grave.

"We were dead on our feet in the daylight, but hope gave us surprising amounts of strength. After a couple of months, I'd managed to steal or bargain for most of the parts for the prototype and some spares beside. The only real problem was the battery packs we needed, so when the opportunity came for me to get at least one, I jumped for it. In retrospect that may not have been such a great idea, but unfortunately, hope was also making me a little less wary.

"The guards had apparently decided that my good behaviour meant that I could be trusted to clear a bunch of broken parts from the mechanical workshops. I couldn't believe my luck when I saw the battery pack just sitting on one of the benches and I couldn't possibly let the opportunity slide. I hid it in the junk I was hauling out in a wheelbarrow and got out as quickly as possible, then I stuffed it under the steps of one of the temporary houses that were being used by some of the guards. I figured I could come and get it later."

"So what happened, someone found it?"

"Oh no, no one found it. We even managed to retrieve it a while later. What happened was, someone realised it was missing. I told you that stuff was inventoried. They figured out the approximate time it disappeared and figured out who'd been in the workshop. Luckily it wasn't just me; there were a good few people who'd been in and out. They gathered up all the suspects and demanded someone confess, and when no one did they took people aside and started persuading with metal batons."

"Shit."

"Pretty much. The guards were... Look, I did meet some guards that genuinely seemed okay individually. I don't know what the hell it is about human nature that makes people sink down to the worst level and turn into raging psychos when they get into mobs, but..."

"They were bad?"

He gazed at her. "The thing was, I knew these guys. I hated some of them, true, but I'd made deals with them. I *knew* them, and everything had been going so damn well up to now and...

"They ground me into the floor and kicked me in the face. They hit my legs with the baton so hard I couldn't stand." He twisted his eyes from hers and scowled at the wall. "They *spat* on me. And they laughed while they were doing it. In the end I just curled up and prayed for it to stop. I don't pray, ever, but I prayed then."

G stared the wall for a few more seconds, absent-mindedly rubbing a scar that was just visible under his arm sleeve. He continued, "They finally dumped me back in the sleeping area when they'd determined that they weren't going to get anything out of me. I was lucky to get off with what I did. I might have been killed, after all.

"None of the other prisoners wanted to go near me when I got back. They knew I'd been in trouble and they didn't want to be seen as an accomplice, didn't want to get the same. I didn't blame them; I must have looked appalling. I could feel my eye puffing up, the blood trickling down my face. My ears were still ringing and the world looked like someone had bled all the colours out of it. I wanted to throw up; I wanted to faint, and I've no idea how I managed to not do either. And the worst thing? Was that everyone was staring at me out of the corner of their eyes and pretending that I wasn't there. I was curled up against the wall, covered with dirt and blood and spit and no one would even look at me.

"And then Piper stepped forward.

"He ignored the scared looks from everyone else and helped me to my bed. He tipped a little of his water ration onto his shirt and made a passable attempt to clean me up. And then, while others just stared, he leaned over and gently, ever so gently, hugged me. Nothing sexual about it, and nothing childish. Just a hug. Just a token gesture of human contact, of human comfort, in a place where there was little of both...

"I really started to trust him after that. I couldn't make myself not.

Part Two